As Long as the Lemon Trees Grow (53)
“What’s this place?” I manage to huff out.
Kenan smiles. He doesn’t look the least bit bothered by climbing eight flights of stairs. “This is my old home. I used to come to the roof after school and do my homework.”
I look around. It’s a simple, standard building roof, and the floor is bare save for three broken satellites swept to the side. The view is Old Homs and the sunset. There are no other buildings obscuring it, and I’m able to witness the sun begin her descent on the horizon.
Kenan swings his legs over the edge and I stifle a cry of warning. Slowly, I come up beside him and gingerly near the edge but don’t swing my legs over.
He turns toward me, his smile serene. “When was the last time you saw the sunset, Salama? Properly saw it.”
I frown. “I don’t remember.”
“With all the destruction happening down there, it’s easy to forget the beauty that’s up here. The sky is so beautiful after rainfall.”
The most beautiful sunsets are always the ones that come after a rain, I had said to Layla once when we were at her family’s summer house in the countryside. We’d been stuck inside all day, watching a storm rage against the windows, unable to go swimming in the river beside the gardens. Layla played with my hair while we watched Castle in the Sky from Baba’s laptop. It was the perfect comfort movie when the clouds were gray and the raindrops chased each other on the windows.
And I was right.
The sky is now a burst of purple and pink fragmenting through the tangerine orange, the clouds taking on a lavender tinge.
“You asked me if you could see colors again, Salama. If we deserve to see them,” Kenan says quietly. “I think we do. I think you can. There’s too little of it in death. In pain. But that’s not the only thing in the world. That’s not all that Syria has. Syria was once the center of the world. Inventions and discoveries were made here; they built the world. Our history is in the Al-Zahrawi Palace, in our mosques, in our earth.”
He points to the ground below and I peek over the ledge, my nerves electrified with the fear of falling. I squint and see two little boys and three girls laughing, playing some sort of game.
“Look at them,” Kenan says. “Look how even the agony hasn’t stripped their innocence.”
Then he points to a tree situated at the street’s side. Its three thick trunks twist through each other, the branches brittle-looking, a hint of green leaves surfacing through its pores. “That lemon tree’s been here forever. I used to climb it all the time when I was younger. I think there’s a picture Baba took of me sitting atop it, with Yusuf hanging to my side.”
I stay silent and glance at him. His tone is full of melancholy, his eyes capturing the golden light.
He sighs, shaking away the memories, and looks at me, smiling. “There’s still beauty, Salama. Still life and strength in Homs.” He nods toward the sun. “There’s color.”
Slowly, I dangle my legs over the brink, keeping a few inches between us. It gives me a rush of adrenaline, being balanced between something solid and air. A sweet breeze tickles my nose and I close my eyes, inhaling it deeply.
When I open them, I’m taken aback by the magic unfolding in front of me. A few stars twinkle through the wisps of cloud. Decorating them like sapphires, precious gifts for those who would gaze upward. Eight levels above the ground brings a unique kind of peace. A quiet that accompanies a late winter night. It’s as if we’re floating in the cosmos, detached from everything weighing us down.
It’s a Studio Ghibli movie.
“Do you see the colors, Salama?” Kenan whispers.
The sunset is gorgeous, but it pales in comparison to him. He’s drenched in the dying day’s glow, a kaleidoscope of shades dancing on his face. Pink, orange, yellow, purple, red. Finally settling into an azure blue. It reminds me of Layla’s painting. A color so stark it would stain my fingers were I to touch it.
As the sun sinks, in those few precious moments when the world is caught between day and night, something shifts between Kenan and me.
“Yes,” I breathe. “Yes.”
IN A HISTORIC CITY PLAGUED BY BOMBS, LIFE HAS persisted. I see it in the green vines waking up from their winter slumber, squirming through the rubble. Daffodils blooming, their petals opening bashfully. I see it in Layla, who smiles more, now that I do. When I see these subtle signs of life on my way to the hospital, my heart expands.
But there are times where it takes everything in me not to fall into despair. Inside I’m still broken, haunted by a little girl I threatened to kill.
Still, Am and I have fallen into a routine: I give him one Panadol tablet; he reassures me with updates about the boat. Though the updates never change, I cling to hope.
Kenan, however, has been losing one thread of life after another as he spends more time at the hospital. His hands shake when he holds his camera, and his eyes are always filled with tears. I’ll never forget how he looked when he saw a seven-month-old baby who had been caught in a fire from a bomb’s blast.
He’s shown me more of the comments he’s gotten on his YouTube videos. Everyone is in awe, sending prayers for us and praising him for risking his life to document what’s happening. During those moments, there’s a certain glow on his face. A serenity I don’t see at other times. Like all of this is worth it. But it only exists in these brief moments and disappears entirely when death takes his hold on the hospital once more.